Showdown In Big Sky Country

Boat/US Magazine, May, 2001 by Ryck Lydecker

When Bill and Kathy Frazier sold their house in Bozeman, Montana and cashed in their retirement funds to bankroll and refurbish a marina, they knew it wouldn't be easy. After all, the docks were awash and abandoned, the floating ship's store/office building was nearly sunk and slipholders, well, there weren't any.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation had in fact condemned the Yacht Basin Marina, a 40-year-old facility on leased land at the north end of 25-mile-long Canyon Ferry Reservoir, about 20 miles east of Helena, the state capital.

But after 20 years in Big Sky country, the two transplanted Easterners and Boat U.S. members had developed the kind of resourcefulness that the great American West is famous for. Heck, even the devastating Canyon Ferry Fire -- which turned 44,000 acres and 13 homes to toast last July and came within 100 feet of destroying six years of blood and sweat at the marina -- only slowed them down some.

A VHF radio base station the Coast Guard Auxiliary had installed at the marina the year before was manned 24 hours a day and provided a critical link in fire fighting operations. At one point, the only evacuation route for local residents was the lake itself, and the marina became a nerve center where helicopters "dipped" out of the basin and tank trucks used the launch ramp to take on water.

But even that experience didn't prepare the Fraziers for the firebomb their landlord, Uncle Sam, dropped last October. Under a new government "plan," they would have to close their marina in three years. You might say they went from the fire into the frying pan.

"We didn't know anything about this until two weeks before public hearings were to be held," reports Kathy Frazier. "Everyone knew the Bureau of Reclamation had been working on a management plan for Canyon Ferry for years but nobody knew they were proposing to shut down our marina.

As called for by federal law, the management plan and environmental assessment addressed all the activities and water uses on and around Canyon Ferry, created 50 years ago by damming the Missouri River. The plan laid out three different management schemes, two of which -- including the agency's "preferred alternative" -- called for closing Yacht Basin Marina when the Frazier's contract runs out in 2004.

Why?

Overcrowding. The aim was to "displace" recreational vessels from the reservoir's north end to "reduce congestion and the feeling of overcrowding experienced by some users." And to do that, the plan called for spending $500,000 to dredge a new harbor about 15 miles down the lake.

"We've been boating on Canyon Ferry for the last eight years," reports Sam Gianfrancisco, who keeps his 20-foot Bayliner at Yacht Basin. "When they say it's overcrowded, I don't know what they're talking about. This in Montana, for heaven's sake."

But there was standing room only at the public meetings, thanks to Gianfrancisco and other boaters who formed the Canyon Ferry Action Committee to shine the public spotlight on what the Bureau was proposing.

'MOM & POP' AND PROUD OF IT

Yacht Basin is one of threes private marinas operated under Bureau of Reclamation concessions contracts. And like Yacht Basin, Kim's Marina across the lake and Goose Bay Marina at the south end are "mom-and-pop" operations. Local boaters like it that way.

"Bill and Kathy Frazier brought the marina back from a state of disaster, with the blessing of the bureau every step of the way," says Gianfrancisco. "They put in a $50,000 fuel dock with the bureau's approval last summer. Now they want to close it?"

Another feature of the plan called for turning all the concessions over to a single operator ultimately, and that didn't sit well with the boaters either.

"We feel Yacht Basin and the other marinas are well run by the current concessionaires," Gianfrancisco adds. "They've invested their lives in their businesses and we don't want to be at the mercy of a single concession operator, anyway."

Never mind that the 100-slip Yacht Basin offers the only deepwater dockage on Canyon Ferry, despite wide fluctuations in the lake levels. That's why the Canyon Ferry Yacht Club and the True North Sailing Club make their home at the marina and about one-third of the boats in slips are sailboats. And with what Frazier says is the deepest, longest ramp on the lake, Yacht Basin is the preferred launch site for trailer sailors.

The fact that Yacht Basin Marina is the base of operations for the Coast Guard Auxiliary seemed to have been overlooked, too. The plan notes "about 30 water-related deaths" since 1975, but it fails to mention the hard work of Flotilla 10-03 to cut the accident and death rate since 1990. According to Flotilla Commander and BoatU.S. member Robert E. Carroll, there have been only four boating fatalities on the lake since then. (In fact, Flotilla 10-03 was judged the Auxiliary's top flotilla in 1998, and awarded the BoatU.S. Flotilla of the Year Award for its efforts.)

GRASS ROOTS GRASS FIRE

When word about closing Yacht Basin first got to Gianfrancisco, fellow boater Sal Lalani and a few other slipholders last October, it spread like, well, wildfire.